It’s one of those little things that irks me so much. I remember reading something about how the reparations germany had to pay were not at all excessive (especially when compared to other wars at the time).
Someone brought it up, so naturally, I’d like to counter it.
Lenin provides an excellent analysis of why the war happened in “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”. I strongly recommend reading the book. Anyway, the Treaty was brutal on Germany (army restrictions, unsustainable finance capital imports, a debt that took them 92 years to pay off, the buying up of entire German industries, and the subordination of the German banks which ended Germany’s status as an international exporter of capital), but was it “unfair”? The European capitalists went balls-deep into total war over colonies and finance capital export “territories” and Germany simply happened to lose. If Germany had won, they would have done the same to England and France (or maybe even worse. According to “Export Empire”, German generals including Ludendorff wanted to use Slavic slave labor in the territories ceded by the RSFSR).
I’ll definitely give it a listen. I remember skimming it multiple times to see the definition of Imperialism, but never read the whole thing.
It’s a great book and needs attention and time. It’s definitely not light reading. It contains and analyzes a lot of figures and data on German, French, English and Russian finances of the time.